uptick

Thank you for your prayers and kind comments on my post the other day. I can feel the needle on my mood-o-meter starting to tip back towards positive, which is a much better place to be. I still have this weird anxiety nibbling at my edges, but am taking lots of deep breaths and trying to focus on what is true and let go of what is just the twisted narrative about myself that I’ve memorised. I was reminded how good it is to have long term Christian friends because they can see and remind you of the progress you’ve made in your life. I was describing this unhelpful internal narrative to one of my dearest friends and she pointed out some of the hard but good choices I’ve made over the years and encouraged me to keep going.

(Hooray for the internet is all I can say, otherwise I think with the tyranny of distance and the busyness of life some of those long term friendships might have become less rich. Much as I am all for the romance of getting cards and letters in the post, who really has time to sit down and write them at length anymore?)

I have had songs from The Sound of Music swirling in my head since the weekend phone call I got telling me I was cast as Sister Berthe! I was pretty floored actually, because I had just hoped to get in to the chorus and instead I’m listed in the principal cast. How amazing! What a boost to the self-esteem. What’s also nice is one of my piano students has been cast as one of the children; we played ‘Do-Re-Mi’ at our lesson last week in celebration. I am scared about/looking forward to meeting a whole bunch of new people and hoping I can manage my energy levels okay. I realise there will be a lot of sitting around backstage (the nuns are on at the beginning and the end, if it’s the same as the movie) so I hope I get on well with my castmates.

Also I get to foil Nazis by stealing car parts at the end to help the von Trapps escape. So that’s pretty great!

I’ve watched the movie again over the last few days and realised I hadn’t watched it properly since I was a teenager, other than seeing bits and pieces when it’s on TV. It’s such a lonnnnng movie that if you include ads it just goes on forever. I know the first half well, but I’m always a bit sketchy about the second half after intermission (after Maria leaves the party and runs back to the abbey). I think because then it gets into more about the adults so I’d get bored and stop watching. But boy, for all its saccharine sweetness, it’s pretty dark. Also Julie Andrews is an excellent comic actress. I forgot that.

In other news, I had an incredible massage on Monday. That really helped to release some of the physical tension, though it did leave me completely zonked. I have embraced the bartering economy; I am going to supply B with essential oil blends and make up some salves for her in exchange for some massages. A very good arrangement when one of you has no money and the other of you is highly skilled but not yet fully qualified. For all that I know the many benefits of massage, I never seemed to prioritise it for myself. But I think it’s something I definitely need to have frequently, like a tune up to keep my motor running.

On that front, I can’t remember if I said, but I decided to put my massage business on pause. I haven’t ruled out going back to it one day but it was just too hard to keep that ball in the air with everything else. I think B will do really well though as a) she’s getting qualified as a full remedial therapist, which I wasn’t able to do because it cost more than I could afford, and b) she knows most of Launceston, especially in the sporting world, so already is building up a healthy list of clients. Much harder to do when you’re a blow in from outta town. I don’t feel bad about pausing the Garden Studio though; I got a lot out of studying and giving massage, and enjoyed it for the time I did it.

And finally for this update, one of the perks of working at home in winter is that you can lie on your bed and use a cat as a foot warmer.